Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 30 August 2018

I was present in the room when Oscar encountered his father for the first time since returning from his fortnight in the south of France. Oscar doesn’t see his father often. I hoped that his father would be pleased to see his son and would kindly ask him how his holiday went. And if, as I hoped, he did ask how the holiday went, I wondered which of his holiday memories Oscar would describe to his father, and in which order.

There was plenty to choose from. For a start there had been the extraordinary weather. Would he tell his father about the terrible heat and the car always like a furnace when we first got in, and driving everywhere with the windows down, and the breeze coming in as hot as a hair dryer, but at least the air was moving. And about the torpid afternoons with the house shutters and curtains closed and lying on the bed under the big ceiling fan in the darkness. And how every afternoon the sky was blackened by clouds piling in from the north, culminating in a mad thunderstorm. And how one afternoon we swam in torrential rain in an outdoor pool with nothing but wild countryside between it and the mountains and watched the lightning bolts reach all the way down to the ground. And afterwards the bowls on display in the dripping pottery market stalls were three-quarters filled with rainwater and the smallholders looked so dejected under their rain hats and see-through ponchos.

Or would he tell his father about the wild boar we saw from the bus at Marseille airport. It was standing on a tatty patch of undergrowth between two car parks. Or would he mention the tiny grey crickets on the rocky monastery path that turned pale blue when they opened their wings and hopped ahead.

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